UNLV engineering students win awards

Monday, April 1, 2002 | 8:57 a.m.

Four University of Nevada, Las Vegas engineering students have received senior design competition awards for projects they completed during the 2001 fall semester.

Tim Ploeger, an electrical engineering major, and Kwame Coleman and Kyle Kisebach, both mechanical engineering majors, all tied for first place honors.

Joe Crapo, an electrical engineering major, took third place in the competition, sponsored each semester by the Howard R. Hughes College of Engineering Entrepreneur, or E-club.

Ploeger created a solid-state booster converter, able to take power from batteries or a fuel cell and boost it to a higher voltage.

Crapo's project, called the 1500-watt voltage inverter, takes high DC voltage and generates 120/240 AC voltage. Used together, the boost converter and voltage inverter are designed to supply 1,500 watts to a residence during power failure.

Coleman and Kisebach teamed up to create a mobile upper extremity continuous passive motion machine, used to help a person with a shoulder injury raise and lower the arm in a safe, repetitive motion for periods between 30 minutes and four hours.